The girl screamed and ran to him, and threw herself upon him, cradling his head in her arms, swaying despairingly from side to side.
Getting at last to her feet, the gaunt woman experienced a moment of terrible remorse, of such acute awareness of what had happened and could not be undone that she swayed also and covered her face with her hands.
In that moment she knew that no one, not even a Monitor, could escape a feeling of guilt for an act of cruelty and violence that could have been avoided, that need not have taken place at all.
For a moment a noose of savage tightness seemed to wrap itself around her heart, making it impossible for her to breathe. Then, gradually, the old hardness reasserted itself and she told herself that she was a fool to feel any sympathy for the girl or remorse over the death of her lover.
Were they not both criminals whose rebellion was a threat to the entire structure of society? Was not the stamping out of such an evil the first duty of a Monitor and could that duty ever be shirked?
What was the girl saying? The girl had raised her eyes and was staring at her, but she couldn't seem to catch the words.
Suddenly she did hear them and for an instant the noose feeling returned, the savage constriction around her heart.
"You will pay in your own way in your own time," the girl was saying. "If there is any justice left in the world, you will pay for what you have done. I no longer even hate you. There is a dark horror in the depth of some minds that destroys everything that is radiant and beautiful in life. In your mind there is such a horror. And in the end it will destroy you, for great evil feeds upon evil until there is nothing left at all."
The Monitor had only the vaguest recollection of speaking to the guard, of gesturing and saying: "Take her away. And remove the body of that criminal from this room. When I return I shall expect to find them both gone."